Death of a Gossip (12 page)

Both shook their heads.

‘And apart from the short time that Mr Cartwright was with Lady Jane, you were together all night?’

‘Why do you ask?’ Heather had turned white.

‘I ask,’ said Hamish patiently, ‘because any copper with a nasty mind might think that
one
of you might have sneaked off and bumped her off, if not the pair of
you.’

‘We had better go,’ said Heather. ‘Tell Mr Blair we’re taking the class up to the Marag to fish. It’s near enough. We must go on as if nothing had
happened.’

After they left, Hamish, who had already heard the sound of voices from his office at the front, ambled through with a cup of tea in one hand.

‘Shouldn’t you be in uniform?’ growled Blair, who was seated behind Hamish’s desk flanked by his two detectives.

‘In a minute,’ said Hamish easily.

‘And I told you to keep out of this. That was the Cartwrights I saw leaving.’

‘Aye.’

‘Well, what did they have to say for themselves?’

‘Only that they knew something they hadn’t told you and now thought they should. Also that they were taking the class up to the Marag which is quite close so that you can go and see
any of the members quite easily.’

‘For Jesus buggering Christ’s sake, don’t they know this is a murder investigation?’

‘Find any clues?’ asked Hamish.

‘Just one thing. If it had been like today, we might have found more traces. But most of the ground was baked hard. The procurator fiscal’s report says she was strangled somewhere
else and dragged along through the bushes and then thrown in the pool.’

‘And what is this clue?’

‘It’s just a bit of a photograph,’ said MacNab, before Blair could stop him. ‘Just a bit torn off the top corner. See.’

He held out the bit of black and white photograph on a pair of tweezers. Hamish took it gingerly.

It showed the very top of a woman’s head, or what he could only guess to be a woman’s head because it had some sort of sparkly ornament on top like the edge of a tiara. Behind was a
poster with the part legend BUY BRIT—.

‘That might have been Buy British,’ said Hamish, ‘which means it would have been taken in the sixties when Wilson was running that Buy British campaign and that would therefore
eliminate the younger members of the fish . . .’

‘Listen to the great detective,’ jeered Blair. ‘We all reached that conclusion in two seconds flat. Why don’t you trot off and find out if anyone’s been raiding the
poor box in one of those churches. Damn ridiculous having so many churches in a wee place like this.’

Hamish turned to amble out. ‘And get your uniform on,’ shouted Blair.

‘Now,’ said Blair, rustling through sheafs of statements. ‘According to these, they’re all innocent. But one of them was so afraid that Lady Jane would print something
about them that they killed her. So chase up all these people we phoned yesterday and hurry them up. And that includes background on the Roths. See if there’s been a telex from the FBI. Find
out if any of them have been in trouble with the police, although I think you’ll have to dig deeper than that.’

Hamish changed into his uniform, admitting to his reflection in the glass that he, Hamish Macbeth, was a very angry man. In fact, he could not quite remember being so angry in all his easygoing
life. He was determined to go on talking to the members of the fishing school until someone said something that gave himself away. He was not going to be frightened because it was a murder
investigation. All criminals were the same whether it was a theft in the school or poaching deer on the hills. You talked, asked questions, and listened and watched and waited. The hell with Blair.
He would go up to the Marag and find out what Jeremy had been doing outside Lady Jane’s room. As he left by the back door, the press were entering the police station by the front. At least
Lochdubh would be spared their headlines until the following morning. The newspapers were always a day late.

In any common-or-garden murder, the press would not hang about longer than a day or two. But this murderee had a title and the location was well away from their office with out-of-town expenses,
so they would all try to spin it out as long as they could. Of course, Lady Jane had been one of their own, so to speak, and Hamish had learned from his relative in Fleet Street some time ago that
the press were not like the police: they were notoriously uninterested in anything that happened to one of their ranks except as a subject for gossip.

The day was warm and sweaty, and although the rain had stopped, there was a thick mist everywhere and the midges were out in clouds. Hamish took a stick of repellent out of his tunic pocket and
rubbed his face and neck with it.

When he reached the Marag, it was to find the fishing school diligently at work, looking like some old army-jungle movie, as each one had a mosquito net shrouding the face.

Hamish scanned the anonymous figures, picked out Heather and John by virtue of their expert casting rather than their appearance, and Charlie because of his size and because his mother was
sitting on a rock nearby, flapping away the mosquitoes and watching her son as if expecting him to be dragged off to prison at any moment. Hamish went to join her.

‘I think this is ridiculous,’ she burst out as soon as she saw him. ‘It’s horrible weather and the whole school should be broken up and sent home.’

‘They seem quite happy,’ said Hamish.

‘I don’t understand it,’ wailed Mrs Baxter. ‘Those Cartwrights suggested the school should try to go on as if nothing has happened, and they all leapt at it when just a
moment before they had been threatening to ask for their money back. I told my Charlie
he
was coming straight home with me, and he
defied
me. Just like his father.’ Two large
tears of self-pity formed in Mrs Baxter’s eyes and she dabbed at them furiously with a tissue. ‘I knew I should never have let Charlie come all the way up here. The minute I got his
letter, I was on the train.’

‘Aye, and when did you arrive?’

‘I
told
the police. I got to Lochdubh just after the terrible murder.’

‘Then how is it that Mrs MacPherson down at the bakery saw you the night before?’

‘It wasn’t me. It must have been someone else.’

‘Blair will check the buses and so on, you know,’ said Hamish. ‘It’s always better to tell the truth. If you don’t, it looks as if you might have something to hide.
Did you know Lady Jane was a newspaperwoman?’

Mrs Baxter sat in silence, twisting the damp tissue in her fingers. Rain dripped from her soutwester. ‘She’s been around the neighbourhood asking questions,’ said Mrs Baxter at
last in a low voice. ‘I’ve never got on with my neighbours and I know they told her all about the divorce. But what’s divorce? Half the population of Britain get divorced every
year. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of and that I told her.’

‘You
told
Lady Jane?’

‘Well, I phoned her before I got on the train,’ said Mrs Baxter miserably, ‘and I said if she wrote anything about my Charlie I would . . .’

‘Kill her?’

‘People say all sorts of things they don’t mean when they’re angry,’ said Mrs Baxter defiantly. ‘This is a wretched business. Do you know that detective, MacNab,
was round at the house last night asking for Charlie’s leader?’

‘No, I did not. I’m shocked.’

‘So you should be. Suspecting a mere child.’

‘It is not that that shocks me but the fact that they did not immediately check all the leaders earlier in the day. Was anyone’s leader missing?’

‘I
don’t know.
You
should know. They fingerprinted everyone as well.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Hamish saw a white police car moving slowly round the edge of the loch.

He moved quickly out of sight behind a stand of trees and made his way silently along a rabbit track that led back down to the village. Jeremy would have to wait. Hamish went straight to the
hotel and asked the manager, Mr Johnson, where the press had disappeared to, since he would have expected them to be up at the loch, photographing the school.

‘There’s a big Jack the Ripper sort of murder broken in London,’ said Mr Johnson, ‘and that’s sent most of them scampering back home. The nationals anyway. This is
small beer by comparison. Also, Blair got the water bailiffs to block the private road to the Marag. He hates the press. Going to solve the murder for us, Mr Macbeth?’

‘Aye, maybe.’ Hamish grinned. ‘Any hope of a wee shufty at Lady Jane’s room?’

‘Blair had it locked, of course. No one’s to go in. Police commandment.’

‘I’m the police, so there’ll be no harm in letting me in.’

‘I suppose. Come along then. But I think you’d better try to leave things as they are. I’ve a feeling that Blair doesn’t like you.’

Hamish followed the manager upstairs and along the corridors of the hotel. ‘They took a plan of all the hotel rooms,’ said Mr Johnson over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know
what they expect to learn from that because it’s said she was strangled up on the hillside in the middle of the night, not far from where she was shoved in the pool. They’ve found a
bittie of a photograph, and Blair got everybody down to the last chambermaid fingerprinted. No fingerprints on the photo, of course, and none on those chains that were around her legs, as if there
would be anything worthwhile after that time of churning and bashing about that pool. But Mr Blair likes to throw his weight around. Here we are.’

He put the key in the lock and opened the door. Lady Jane had occupied a suite with a good view of the loch. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Mr Johnson cheerfully. ‘I
can’t feel sad about this murder. It’s turned out good for business. Every lunch and dinner is booked up solid for the next few weeks. They’re coming from as far as Aberdeen, but
then these oil people have more money than sense.’

Left alone, Hamish stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked around. Surely it must have dawned on Blair before anything else that Lady Jane would have brought notes of some kind. Yes, of
course it had. Fingerprint dust lay like grey snow on every surface. Well, they would hardly come back for
more
fingerprints. Hamish began his search. The suite consisted of a small entrance
hall with a side table and one chair, a tiny sitting room with a writing desk, television set and two easy chairs, and a bedroom with a bathroom leading off it.

There was a typewriter open on the writing desk with a pile of hotel writing paper beside it. He diligently searched the top of the desk and drawers. There was not a single piece of paper with
any writing on it whatsoever. Perhaps Blair had taken away what there was.

He turned his attention to the bedroom. He slid open drawers of frivolous underwear – Lady Jane’s taste in that direction was rather startling – and rummaged underneath.
Nothing. If she had had a handbag, then Blair must have taken it away. Two suitcases lay on a luggage rack at the foot of the bed. Locked.

He took a large ring of keys out of his tunic pocket and got to work, listening all the while in case Blair should choose that moment to return for another search. At last the first case sprang
open. There was a lavender sachet, two detective stories, a box of heated rollers, and a hair dryer. No paper of any kind. The next suitcase was completely empty.

He looked under the bed, under the mattress, down the sides of the chairs, even in the toilet tank and the bathroom cupboard, but not one scrap of paper did he find.

The manager had left the keys in the door. Hamish carefully locked the room and deposited the keys in the manager’s office.

He decided to go back to the Marag to see if the field was clear. But as he was making his way out of the hotel, he heard voices from the interviewing room and noticed Alice sitting nervously in
the lounge outside.

‘He’s got Jeremy in there,’ said Alice. ‘Will this never end? He’s going to see me next and then call in the others one by one. I told Jeremy about that court thing
and he didn’t mind, so you were wrong.’

‘Is that a fact?’ said Hamish, looking down at her curiously.

Alice jerked her head to one side to avoid the policeman’s gaze. Jeremy had been offhand all day, to say the least.

Hamish left quickly, deciding to try to find out a bit about the background of the others. He had in his tunic a list of the names and addresses of the members of the school. Perhaps he should
start by trying to find out something about the Roths. But he could not use the telephone at the police station because Blair had set up headquarters there, and although he was busy interviewing
Jeremy, no doubt his team of officers would be in the office.

Hamish’s car was parked outside his house. He decided to take a run up to the Halburton-Smythes. The rain had stopped falling and a light breeze had sprung up. But everything was wet and
sodden and grey. Mist shrouded the mountains, and wet, long-haired sheep scampered across the road in front of the car on their spindly black legs like startled fur-coated schoolmarms.

He swung off the main road and up the narrower one which led through acres of grouse moor to the Halburton-Smythes’ home. Home was a mock castle, built by a beer baron in the nineteenth
century when Queen Victoria made the Highlands fashionable. It had pinnacles, turrets and battlements and a multitude of small, cold, dark rooms.

Hamish pushed open the massive, brass-studded front door and walked into the stone-flagged gloom of the hall. He made his way through to the estate office, expecting to find Mr
Halburton-Smythe’s secretary, Lucy Hanson, there, but the room was deserted and the bright red telephone sitting on the polished mahogany desk seemed to beg Hamish to reach out and use
it.

He sat down beside the desk and after some thought phoned Rory Grant at the
Daily Recorder
in Fleet Street. Rory sounded exasperated when he came on the line. ‘What’s the use
of having a bobby for a relative if I can’t get an exclusive on a nice juicy murder? I had my bags packed and was going to set out on the road north when the Libyans decided to put a bomb in
Selfridges and some Jack the Ripper started cutting up brass nails in Brixton, so I’m kept here. No one cares about your bloody murder now, but you might have given me a buzz. I called the
police station several times, and some copper told me each time to piss off.’